Wikipedia has matured into one of the most beautiful sites I know of, and the most elegant example of information-density. I remember when it was just one of a crowd of budding community-built information clearinghouses, along with an Encarta spinoff, Nupedia, h2g2, Everything^2 , … and was competing with other similarly-minded sites for volunteers — dmoz, the Gutenberg Project, and so on. Look how it has changed from its original design, running on a spartan UseMod wiki, to the current site, using highly customized wiki software.

The wikipedia idealists are also extending their efforts to non-encyclo’ collections of information, such as dictionaries… which, though it’s an English-definition-only dictionary, includes the most concisely complete radical-based dictionary I’ve seen (the best has to be Rick Harbaugh’s incomparable zhongwen.com)

I finally signed up for a wikipedia account, after being drawn in by their glorious main page and universal timeline schema — later I found out these were both the result of energetic work by a single maverick. As for its former competitors, few have yet outgrown the “look ma, I built this!” phase. Here’s a little review of some of them:

Gutenberg Project, private founder, ??k eds. 11k texts + 10/day (80% from pgdp, via ~400 editors/day):Intent: digitize all cr-free texts. The most famous effort of its kind. Compare Google’s plan to digitize old Stanford library content; magazines; Amazon’s digital book project.Pros: org run by two idealistic founders; producing and feeder groups run by eager volunteers. Distributed-proofreading group grew up to provide e-texts Neut: PG is fundamentally a “roll your own; no centralized streamlining” org, strongly separating PR/501c status/admin’n/vision from implementation.Cons: site(s) not beautiful; not deeply collaborative. people with infinite energy can funnel it all into a few books without furthering the project organizat’n (which is still lacking); better stats, better-coordinated collab tools needed; final version of digital copy needs more reliably-labelled quality control [after it’s done, the final copy is never reviewed via normal processing steps by other editors]. only recently becoming int’l.Overs: an extensive FAQ; a long “how to help” page; news and newsletter page; meager stats (pages/day, texts finished, pages/user) at subsid sites like pgdp.

Dean’s infamous yawp, seen comparatively over time — in articles the next day, and then later in the week. Most telling are the reporters who got two articles out of the event, one early and one late in the week — the two mentioned wrote it up inoffensively, then later (once it became a Story) reported it with spin and dark import. A lovely piece on wagging the dog.

…everything seems ridiculous. The problems of “Denial of Service” and “spoofing” have been around since long before there was human-generated electricity… now it’s just cheap and easy to carry one out from across a country.

What prompted this commentary is SCO’s new letter claiming open-source software is a threat to national security. So: who’s really behind their current program? Do they have an arrangement with MS? Why is this broad extension of their initial lawsuit a profitable foray for them? [It would seem much more profitable for a larger company with more to gain — MSFT, a thousand times larger than SCO, seems like a more promising suitor]

And: if people start publishing sincere meaningless letters, and research papers [prompted, say, by business interests, or for personal fame], and books [propaganda, private vendetta, political or financial gain, sincere delusion], and financial reports, historical documents, resumes, instruction manuals, etc — how can the world react in such a way as to efficiently cull truth from fiction? In which areas of writing/thought is it possible to perform such a separation?

Presumably, in the presence of a quick cheap metric, one could enact spot checks combined with stiff punishments to probabilistically suppress misleading communications. Else? How to leverage distributed community efforts, accounting for 2d- and higher-order errors? This seems to be a significant problem of universal inliquidity.

Gough finished his 7-month naked trek across England on Friday. He refused to don clothes even as winter came on and he neared the northern extent of his journey. He was arrested on many occasions, only proving his point that the natural Body had a major image problem to overcome in England. What a hero! Also high on my list for the year.

Everyone loves to ignore the delegate count in favor of the ranking of candidates in each state by popular vote… I find the delegate system [and its disappearance from the public mind — how many people do you know who understand how delegates are selected, cast votes, interact with their Party?] fascinating. This article keeps track of the running delegate count for all candidates…

So some snooping and ‘breaking in’ has been going on for a long time… to cement the re-election of our popular president, among other things. I don’t know what to say to that, except… I know some people on bothsides of the fence who have mused publicly that they would love to do just this. There’s something deeply wrong with our set of acceptable morals that makes everyone think

They’re right about complex national issues, and the others are wrong, and

Realizing their pure vision / defeating the othersjustifies almost any means.

When my brightest and sweetest friends start wandering into this territory, I worry.

Nothing warms the heart like a last-minute pull-through. Kerry’s victory yesterday is just what he needed to rally his troops… what I’m more interested in, however, are Edwards’ buoyancy and Clark’s quiet coalition-building. Edwards manages to lift my spirits… can’t quite put my finger on why, but I’m thinking about it.

Right on, Mr. Thompson! I particularly like his articulate dissection of the lossy and arbitrary separation of music into official genres, in which artists, industry, and critics all share a part. And his note of how much he can tell about someone by their walk and state of mind, in contrast to the more standard modern stereotypes.

Some businesses take advantages of new OofM’s, like the first mass-production factories, early users of huge warehouses, early applications of specialization.

Hundreds of years later, historians are quick to say “here was an amazing breakthrough in technology,” but at the time it was often spun as a personal success of one businessman, one product line, one marketing technique — whoever was quickest on the uptake, with a nod from those few who actually knew what was going on, could pick up the acclaim for the surge forward. It is sometimes to one’s advantage not to let others know wherein success truly lies.

However, in each age looking forward, there are few people discerning new OofM’s from ‘brilliant new product niches’, ‘revolutionary advertising strategy’, etc. Laying 10x as much fiber optic cable as your competitors does not an OofM make. How far up
the financial food chain does this carelessness extend?

Purification. Cross-indexing. Sampling. Empathizing. Tracking.

You know what I’m talking about. Yes, you. I see you reading every
now and then. No need to hide. [for the rest of you, consider which of the above are in the future, and which are in the past…]

Until next time, keep your nose clean and your eyes open, and trust your senses.

There’s not much up there that makes use of, or even allows for, contributions by the vast bulk of people affected by these works; their audiences, readers without time or inclination to polish their reactions to a high sheen and 10 column inches, etc. Only the second applies, really, and then only the last part of it — the part that was wholly accidental.

Is this foolishness? Failure of government to adapt to the multiplying ways in which it can be useful?